Research and development of commercially viable memory devices that are randomly accessed, have relatively low power consumption, and are non-volatile is ongoing. One ongoing area of research is in resistive memory cells where resistance states can be changed. One avenue of research relates to devices that store data in memory cells by structurally or chemically changing a physical property of the memory cells in response to applied write voltages and/or current, which in turn changes cell resistance. A controller uses a voltage read reference to detect the resistivity. An example of a variable resistance memory device includes memories using phase changing glasses (e.g., chalcogenide glass). The change in physical property, or phase change, is a transition and, within a population of phase change cells, there exists a distribution of transition latencies. The tails/ends of this distribution is problematic as a clear set of read/demarcation voltages can be difficult to ascertain. Further, delaying accesses to accommodate the tails/ends of the distribution erodes the value of phase change memory (i.e., read times can be lengthened).